East Coast Music Awards Recap

From May 2nd-6th, we hung out in Halifax, Nova Scotia for the East Coast Music Awards. The ECMA Festival and Conference is now a five-day, non-stop musical celebration showcasing and recognizing the best of East Coast artists and music. The internationally recognized event gathers Canadian musicians from the East Coast, music industry professionals, and music fans to learn from the industry's most respected players and watch some of the country's brightest rising stars. This year, we presented the award for Electronic Recording of the Year, and had the chance to interview the five incredible nominees and watch them perform during…

Top 15 Roland Releases of ’15

Roland MX-1 Bonus Features

At its core, the Roland MX-1 Mix Performer is a great mixer with built-in effects and controls that are excellent for both live performance and studio use. It is an 18 channel audio device, and the effects can be sequenced using TR-style buttons. These features alone make it a good value for the price; however,…

Which one do I buy? FA-06 vs VR-09

Roland has two keyboard instruments that are just over the $1000 mark, the FA-06 Workstation and VR-09 Live Performance Synthesizer. I’ve had a number of keyboardists say that they were torn between the two and ask which instrument they should buy. In this post, I figured I would compare the two and give you some…

Recording Tips: Post Production

The pizza is all eaten, the tracks are all recorded, and everyone is satisfied that their parts are both in tune and in time. If not, it is usually quicker to record them again than trying to use editing to patch them up in post production. Having said that, slight imperfections in vocal pitching can be polished out using an automatic pitch correction…

Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology Distance Learning Program

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology is Canada’s only museum dedicated to the science of palaeontology, the study of ancient life through the fossil record. It celebrates the history and spectacular diversity of life on Earth—from the tiniest grain of pollen to the mightiest dinosaur. Situated in the rugged badlands just outside of Drumheller, Alberta,…

3 Uses for the Roland HS-5 Session Mixer

The Roland HS-5 Session Mixer may very well be the answer to many of your band’s musical dilemmas. Whether you are rehearsing with your band in your basement, recording in the studio, or performing live on stage, the HS-5 has some very useful features that bring your musical experience over the top. First and foremost,…

Introducing Roland Canada TRIBES! Voici les Roland Canada TRIBES!

En Français Roland Canada is pleased to introduce you to Roland Canada TRIBES! Roland Canada TRIBES is a collection of online communities where Canadian Roland & BOSS fans gather to talk about the music they’re making (and listening to!) and get expert advice on the gear they own or are thinking of buying. TRIBES include…

Justifying the Keyboard Workstation

It may be hard to see the need for a keyboard workstation these days, as the computer is rapidly taking over the music creation workflow. But the new FA-Series Workstations from Roland (FA-06 and FA-08) give a simple reason to their existence: they allow you to get musical ideas down quickly and easily. This is…

Roland Drivers for Windows 8.1 and OSX 10.9 Mavericks – Ready now!

Roland products, such as our current Capture Series USB Audio Interfaces, are known for their incredibly stable drivers. All Roland products are designed to achieve peak performance – computer drivers simply are part of the package and perform just as well. In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 was released earlier this month, while…

Musikmesse – Perspective of the New Guy

Well, I must say now that my visit to the Frankfurt Musikmesse is over, what a treat it was! I’ve been to many NAMM shows in California which is super exciting as well, but Musikmesse is an entirely different experience. First of all, the show is enormous! The show guide indicates seven halls, each of…